Field Theory by Hadyn Green

When you hear of sports and politics you will most likely think of those rather nasty times when New Zealand was touring South Africa and vice versa. You may think of recent cricket tours of Zimbabwe. You might think of Olympic boycotts. But in general you'll be thinking: sports and politics don't mix.

Not so my friends, not so.

Former Russian President, all-around action man, and tiger subduer, Vladimir Putin has just released an instructional video on judo. The DVD, Let's Learn Judo with Vladimir Putin, is mainly Putin (a black belt) throwing opponents to the floor.

Putin said the health of a country was expressed through sport. "The level of developing of sports undoubtedly defines the level of development of the country itself," he added.

"Without sports, it's impossible to speak of a healthy way of life, about the health of the nation as such."

He also mentioned that French President Nicolas Sarkozy was keen to get judo lessons.

So with the US elections coming up Guardian blogger Andy Bull had a look at the American candidate's sports affiliations. Like how Obama sucked at bowling, but rules at basketball (Barry O'Bomber was his nickname).

When McCain was a prisoner of war, he gave his captors the names of the Green Bay Packers offensive line instead of the names of his squadron. Of course, when McCain was campaigning in Pittsburgh the Packers became the Steelers. Campaigning in Tampa will be a bitch.

We know that the current President knew the fundamentals of rugby at least. John Kerry's campaign was all but dead when he tried to get the "football" vote. And speaking of Kerry, remember the NASCAR dads? And now of course it's Hockey moms.

Going even further back I remember the only thing that Hunter S Thompson liked about Nixon, and vice versa, (in Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail) was his football knowledge.

In fact if we keep travelling back in time sport and politics have gotten along like a house on fire.

But what about world leaders and their national sports?
John Howard:

Tony Blair:

Hmmmm, and our own leaders? Has anyone seen John Key's ruck clearance skills or Helen Clark's educated left boot?

So other than a few blips, sports and politics get along just fine. But in sport, like any workplace, there is also "office" politics:

"Let's just say the president is not backward in coming forward and speaking his mind. He does what he does and we've just got to live with it, for now."

That is of course our own Tana Umaga on Toulon president Mourad Boudjellal. Ooo that'll be an awkward Christmas party to attend.

And before I forget:

1. Monday is Sports Day in Japan, so get out and run about (and wear your favourite team's colours while doing it)
2. So as not to bore you all with another Friday of uniforms, I dissected the new Stade Francais experiment at the Dropkicks. Most commentators seem to hate them (usually for homophobic reasons) but I think they are ok (and I love the brown uniform from last year, you can buy them here)

Today's post contains a large amount of swearing, so quickly gather the kids around. And you may need to read some of these words aloud so they get the pronunciation correct.

Newcastle's interim manager Joe Kinnear was quite angry at various members of the press and, much like our own Winston Peters, he was not afraid to voice his displeasure at a press conference.

Kinnear Which one is Simon Bird [Daily Mirror's north-east football writer]?

Bird Me.

Kinnear You're a cunt.

The "interview" lasted some time and all in all Kinnear swore 52 times. If you'd like to count for yourself the audio is here (You might want headphones and thanks Graeme at Sportsfreak for the link).

I think that this is my favourite part:

Kinnear I had a 24-hour meeting with the entire staff.

Bird Joe, you are only here six weeks, you could have done that on Sunday, or Saturday night.

Kinnear No, no, no. I didn't want to do it. I had some other things to do.

Bird What? More important things?

Kinnear What are you? My personal secretary? Fuck off.

Brilliant. Alex Ferguson has nothing on that.

I love a good coach meltdown. It's all the stress and tension of the sport expelled in a stream of four letter words. The tantrums rarely come from coaches of winning teams or of coaches whose jobs are secure. Sometimes you can smell the fear and the pure hatred. Russell Brand agrees:

The raw humanity of the cussing is what makes it interesting, Joe [Kinnear] has truly stripped all subterfuge and mystery from communication - his press conference breakdown has exposed the tension at the heart of the relationship between the press and those who they write about.

By the way, hands up if you knew Russell Brand had a football blog.

As a fan of the American football I have seen a few coach tirades. My favourite is the "they are who we thought they were" rant by a, soon to be fired, Dennis Green.

My favourite bit of that is the PR guy looking to smooth things over at the end. And if you want to see some great rants here's a coach meltdown montage.

I'm sure that if anyone had come along with some dumb questions yesterday for Craig Bellamy (Melbourne) or Shane Howarth (Auckland) they would had a few expletives fired at them.

I got a text on Sunday from Megan asking: "when was the last time Auckland didn't make the top eight?" My answer is "never". Because as far as I know this is only the third time there has been a top eight. The finals system was started in 1992 with semis and a final (top four) and only since the Air New Zealand Cup (2006) that quarterfinals have existed.

What I'm hoping is that with Auckland being cheated out of a finals spot because of bonus points (Auckland had a 5-5 record while Waikato, Taranaki and Tasman each only had 4 wins) will do two things.

1. The NZRU will get rid of the stupid bonus point system. You play to win the game! (play that coach tirade video to get the joke)
2. The number of finalists will be reduced to four. We can't have teams in the final who have a losing record, that's just stupid.

I am a bit peeved that some teams are bringing back their All Blacks now that we're in the finals. I know the players want to play but I feel really sorry for the guys who played their guts out during the season only to be tapped on the shoulder and told "sorry mate, you're not needed now."

And, while the blood's up, why do teams announce the players they've signed before the end of the season? That's what the off season is for.

Ahem, anyway, GO THE BAY! Beat those inbred Southerners! (Disclaimer: Southerners are only inbred for the purposes of smack-talk)

Poor old Melbourne must be feeling a bit kicked at the moment. They have been fined by the NRL for the coach's comments about officials, they lost their captain to a suspension and then they got their nuts handed to them in a 40-0 record loss to Manly. And yet I feel no empathy, strange.

Speaking of no empathy.

And finally, The Dropkicks have been given three copies of the New Zealand Book of Rugby Lists to give away by Random House. So we'll be giving one away (with a few bottles of Epic) each week for the next three weeks. Click through to enter.

This was supposed to be my second post on Friday, sorry for the delay. And I would like to eschew my usual topic of sport and instead tread on other’s toes and discuss music and computers. Mainly it’s about how the two have combined to seriously alter how I listen to music: I don’t listen to albums.

In the distant past (somewhere in mid-2000s) I used to buy CDs. For those who don’t remember these were reflective disks prone to scratching and sunlight. I still have stacks of them at home; they sit below a dusty and unused piece of equipment called, rather imaginatively, a CD-player.

The CD player though, sits below a very well used piece of electronics called the "amplifier music thing". It is what I plug my iPod or laptop into and what makes music blast into my house at various volumes depending on my mood. So let’s be clear on that first, I still do listen to music. In fact I listen to more music now than I did even five years ago.

But now my life is lived through playlists. I have a "good morning" playlist, I have a "tiki-tiki" playlist, a "summer" playlist, a "just great songs" playlist, a "good new stuff" playlist, and so on. Playlists are the new mixtapes.

In fact if I ever listen to whole albums it’s because I’ve made an artist playlist. For example I had a whole month only listening to my Amy Winehouse playlist (technically two albums and a couple of singles), I was surprised as the next person that I didn’t get sick of it after a day.

But it is a rare occurrence these days that I will sit and listen to an album from track one to track n in numerical order. I quickly tired of having to listen to tracks the tracks that, for want of a better word, sucked. So the creation of playlists in WinAmp and then iTunes was definitely my thing.

The iPod’s random function also worked wonders. But then it got better, iTunes got Genius.

For those of you who haven’t tried Genius yet, I, and many others, heartily recommend it. Genius takes a selected song and creates a playlist made of songs that are "similar". Similar is defined by many things that are in the file’s meta-data, like genre for example.

If I go into iTunes now and select April March’s Chick Habit and press the Genius button it gives me back Beth Orton, Ray LaMontagne, Patti Smith, Belle and Sebastian, Neko Case, The Strokes, Gomes, the Watson Twins, and, for some reason, The Little River Band. Fantastic! (well apart from the Little River Band).

In short it creates a playlist for me. And given that I’m basically a lazy s.o.b. this really is genius. I may never listen to an entire album again. But will I ever buy an entire album again? Yes.

I still have an issue with buying singles. While it is easier and I know I like it because I’ve heard it on the radio or the internet, what about those buried gems that are never released by the record companies? It is only from the crappiest of bands where my favourite song from an album also happens to be the main single release.

For example, I love the Kings of Leon’s Sex on Fire, but I know there are going to be other songs on the album I’m going to like and possibly ones I won’t but I can’t tell which is which by listening to a 30 second preview online or sitting at a listening station in a CD store. So I buy the whole album.

I suppose I could download the album from those crazy Scandinavians and see if I liked it first, but, y’know, the RIANZ folk would HATE me.

Before I bitch about uniforms (it's Friday!) I would like to point out that TVNZ, TV3 and Sky seems to be doing something similar to what I suggested: jointly broadcasting the 2011 World Cup. While in reality my contribution was non-existent I'm still going to take some of the credit for it.

I really do have to rant at Canterbury and Adidas. First Canterbury decides to take its Wallabra concept to the cricket pitch with some god-awful design that ranks with some of the dumbest things New Zealand has worn over the years (though I suppose it's still never as bad as the stuff the Aussies wear).

(By the way I apologise that you have to click the links to see the pics. I tried embedding them but it didn't really work)

Beyond the robo-cleavage: that the fern logo looks like a corsage and you just know that grey side panel will be extended down the trousers. And I think we need to be clear on something, unless it's shiny, the colour on that uniform is grey not silver. Perhaps we need to send out the players in these. At least you know heat won't be a problem.

But Adidas wasn't going to be outdone. New Zealand's Super 14 teams will now have a home and away strip and Adidas sat down for what must have been a good five minutes before finally coming up with its designs (pictures of which were in the DomPost but don't seem to be online).

"Ok The Hurricanes what can we do here?"
"Hmmmm, why don't we take the yellow part and make it dark grey"
"Brilliant! Next!"

I'm actually all for home and away jerseys. Not only does it mean that uniforms colour clashes are less likely, it also gives dedicated followers of (rugby) fashion an extra option. Think you look fat in Otago navy, wear white. Don't look good in Western Force blue (and really, who does?) you can wear Western Force yellow (yes, the Western Force are the worst dressed team in the Super 14. I mean, black shorts? C'mon!). By the way all those people who say that fans will have to dip into their pockets for another $150 jersey are munters. If your team is playing in their road jersey or their home jersey they won't care what you're wearing as long as you're cheering for them (and I suppose that you aren't wearing the opposition colours).

But home and away strips also means you can do cool things like wear your away uni at home. And it also opens up the options for alternate uniforms. Alternate uniforms are crazy things. They can either be solid-colour oddities, interesting combos of shirt and shorts or they could be throwbacks.

The only New Zealand team that has worn throwback (as far as I know) is the Warriors who wore ten-year tribute unis. The best international team throwbacks may be the English football team's long-sleeved red jerseys with gold numbers. If anything would make me interested in English football, it's Peter Crouch in long sleeves.

Non-uniform item: I have just read that The Saveloy will replace Veitch on TVNZ. My opinion on this? It could've been worse, much much worse.

Ps. There will be second post from me today so expect his to disappear from the front page at some point

The Superbowl halftime show is the stuff of legend and satire. Back in 2004 I sat in the lounge of my humble Wellington flat watching Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake dance about.

Jose was outside having a smoke and Jules was in the kitchen getting a hotdog. So I was the only one who saw Janet Jackson's breast "accidentally" fall out of her top.

The shot was so quickly changed and the dead air that followed made me wonder if I had actually seen it. I texted Dom. He had changed the channel and also did not see it.

That infamous publicity stunt by Jackson meant that MTV was never again allowed to produce the half time show and since 2004 the artists have been "safe", old and sans-breasts (well maybe old man boobs): U2, The Rolling Stones; Tom Petty; Prince: and Paul McCartney.

This year's old man is Bruce Springsteen. What is interesting is that people really haven't let go of the breast sighting. Stuff's article goes so far as to call it "televised smut". It was hardly smut, Timberlake didn't even sing "Dick in a Box".

Of course Springsteen will be good, but I agree with MJD: it will be the best show ever if, and only if, he pulls Courtenay Cox out of the audience during Dancin' in the Dark.

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How do you stop your opponents from stopping you? You do something random.

Now, not all sport allows for this strategy. For example you cannot just throw your racquet at your opponent in tennis, as effective as that might be. But in the set-piece style game of American Football a type of offence called A-11 allows for thousands of random plays.

In a standard formation with five fixed linemen, a play can unfold with 36 different scenarios for who receives the snap and who ends up with the ball… In the A-11 offense, because the receivers and linemen (and even quarterbacks) are interchangeable, the number of different possibilities for what can happen on a given play skyrockets to 16,632

This means the defence doesn't even know if the play is going to be run or pass after the ball is snapped because the runner might stop and pass.

Basically it's a signal to noise ratio.

Anything that adds permutations, but also adds mystery about pattern makes this more complicated to decipher

For example at the ruck in rugby there are very few options: pick run right, pick run left, pick run middle, kick over, kick left, kick right, pass left, pass right. However if you can disguise your options somehow, then the defence will be on the back foot (for example the league-style kicks used a lot in rugby now).